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Monday, March 24, 2014

10 Ways Facebook Is Like the Boyfriend You Can't Quit

For a long time Facebook was it. It was the way to get my work seen.

While other sites were for bloggers and businesses and people looking for recipes and hairstyles, Facebook was for everyone. Everyone was there looking, sharing and commenting, everyone from grandmothers to seventh graders. Posting my writing on Facebook was like putting my work on a billboard on the highway - hundreds of people saw it, and if they liked it, they told their friends.

This made it easy to up my number of followers, a number that to a blogger like me was like weight or household income. It was a number that I would kill to keep it moving in a certain direction. A number that was the source of happy dances or considering spending the day with a bottle of vodka and watching Judge Judy.

And now no one on Facebook sees a blogger's stuff.

Facebook is now the person who throws a big black sheet over someone using sandwich boards for the purpose of self promotion.

Facebook is Facebook. They can do whatever they want. And they've been nothing but honest. They're like the crappy boyfriend who lays his cards on the table -- tells you he can't, make that won't, commit.

And fool that you are, you stay with him.

Here are 10, yes 10, ways I know I'm in a very unhealthy relationship with you, Facebook.

You blog-killing, crappy boyfriend piece of you-know-what!

1

I'm constantly checking in on you to see if you're going to change your ways and show me some love.

2

Even though I spend tons of time and energy on you, I know I'll get next to nothing in return.

3

I keep thinking that if I had a better figure you'd like me more, but I'm starting to see that no one is good enough.

4

Even though I know you're a greedy bast--d, I still think about paying you to give me a "boost," but that seems desperate and wrong.

5

I read and talk to friends about strategies that will make you do right by me. Things change for a little bit, then go back to normal.

6

I have so many friends through you and if I break up with you I might lose them!

7

It makes my day when I put my goods out there for some reason or other, you show me off.

8

I wish I could not need you so much, and totally break-up with you, but you are impossible to ignore.

9

Just when I think we are done, you sucker me back in to staying.

10

I am trying to get to know other people, like this guy G+, but he's kinda boring and I just don't get him.

Seriously, most people get their soft news from Facebook. Friends of mine have remarked that they haven't been seeing my posts. Some ask if I still write. Blogging feels like an uphill battle. Big and small sites are feeling the hit. We write for an audience -- for community -- not to send our work and our words into the ether.

1 comment:

Seriously, this post best sums up EXACTLY what I'm feeling about my relationship with Facebook as a blogger. I'd say FB is a bully, but that's too soft of an adjective. Keesha, you keep writing and I'll keep reading. Like that line from "Last of the Mohicans"...I will find you!